Happiness and Bliss

In the words of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad, “If love is an act of doing good, the one who carries love and kindness in his heart brings about happiness and bliss to himself and the people around him.”

In this short movie, these words, spoken on labor day, 1993, are held up as an object of ridicule, since happiness and bliss can’t be further away from the reality Syrian people have been living in.

The 5-minutes short films captures the little details every Syrian knows and remembers quite well, memories of “yearning in our dreams for things as simple as a banana,” as the director puts it. The movie seems to draw a comparison between the era of tyranny, represented by the rule of the Assad family, and the Syrian uprising we are witnessing today, as a helpful reminder to those who may have forgotten why Syrians took to the streets, demanding an end to all this injustice.

The film is produced by the Bidayat Foundation, and the filmmaker and photographer prefer to remain anonymous.

Despite being military par excellence, Turkish presence has been widely welcomed by different segments of Syrian society in Idlib countryside and the Euphrates Shield areas, north of Aleppo. The reason for that being its contribution to improving the living condition of these areas, for the first time since the outbreak of the uprising in 2011.